Plato and the Other Companions of Sokrates, 3rd ed. Volume 1

The dislike so constantly felt by communities having established opinions, towards free speculation and dialectic, was aggravated in its application to Sokrates, because his dialectic was not only novel, but also public, obtrusive, and indiscriminate.89 The name of Sokrates, after his death, was employed not merely by Plato, but by all the Sokratic companions, to cover their own ethical speculations: moreover, all of them either composed works or gave lectures. But in either case, readers or hearers were comparatively few in number, and were chiefly persons prompted by some special taste or interest: while Sokrates passed his day in the most public place, eager to interrogate every one, and sometimes forcing his interrogations even upon reluctant hearers.90 That he could have been allowed to persist in this course of life for thirty years, when we read his own account (in the Platonic Apology) of the antipathy which he provoked — and when we recollect that the Thirty, during their short dominion, put him under an interdict — is a remarkable proof of the comparative tolerance of Athenian practice.

However this may be, it is from the conversation of Sokrates that the Platonic Dialogues of Search take their rise, and we must read them under those same fundamental postulates which Sokrates enunciates to the Dikasts. “False persuasion of knowledge is almost universal: the Elenchus, which eradicates this, is salutary and indispensable: the dialectic search for truth between two active, self-working minds, both of them ignorant, yet both feeling their own ignorance, is instructive, as well as fascinating, though it should end without finding any truth at all, and without any other result than that of discovering some proposed hypotheses to be untrue.” The modern reader must be invited to keep these postulates in mind, if he would fairly appreciate the Platonic Dialogues of Search. He must learn to esteem the mental exercise of free debate as valuable in itself,91 even though the goal recedes before him in proportion to the steps which he makes in advance. He perceives a lively antithesis of opinions, several distinct and dissentient points of view opened, various tentatives of advance made and broken off. He has the first half of the process of truth-seeking, without the last; and even without full certainty that the last half can be worked out, or that the problem as propounded is one which admits of an affirmative solution.92 But Plato presumes that the search will be renewed, either by the same interlocutors or by others.

He reckons upon responsive energy in the youthful subject; he addresses himself to men of earnest purpose and stirring intellect, who will be spurred on by the dialectic exercise itself to farther pursuit — men who, having listened to the working out of different points of view, will meditate on these points for themselves, and apply a judicial estimate conformable to the measure of their own minds. Those respondents, who, after having been puzzled and put to shame by one cross-examination, became disgusted and never presented themselves again — were despised by Sokrates as lazy and stupid.93 For him, as well as for Plato, the search after truth counted as the main business of life.

Another matter must here be noticed, in regard to these Dialogues of Search. We must understand how Plato conceived the goal towards which they tend: that is the state of mind which he calls knowledge or cognition. Knowledge (in his view) is not attained until the mind is brought into clear view of the Universal Forms or Ideas, and intimate communion with them: but the test (as I have already observed) for determining whether a man has yet attained this end or not, is to ascertain whether he can give to others a full account of all that he professes to know, and can extract from them a full account of all that they profess to know: whether he can perform, in a manner exhaustive as well as unerring, the double and correlative function of asking and answering: in other words, whether he can administer the Sokratic cross-examination effectively to others, and reply to it without faltering or contradiction when administered to himself.94 Such being the way in which Plato conceives knowledge, we may easily see that it cannot be produced, or even approached, by direct, demonstrative, didactic communication: by simply announcing to the hearer, and lodging in his memory, a theorem to be proved, together with the steps whereby it is proved.

He must be made familiar with each subject on many sides, and under several different aspects and analogies: he must have had before him objections with their refutation, and the fallacious arguments which appear to prove the theorem, but do not really prove it:95 he must be introduced to the principal counter-theorems, with the means whereby an opponent will enforce them: he must be practised in the use of equivocal terms and sophistry, either to be detected when the opponent is cross-examining him, or to be employed when he is cross-examining an opponent. All these accomplishments must be acquired, together with full promptitude and flexibility, before he will be competent to perform those two difficult functions, which Plato considers to be the test of knowledge. You may say that such a result is indefinitely distant and hopeless: Plato considers it attainable, though he admits the arduous efforts which it will cost. But the point which I wish to show is, that if attainable at all, it can only be attained through a long and varied course of such dialectic discussion as that which we read in the Platonic Dialogues of Search. The state and aptitude of mind called knowledge, can only be generated as a last result of this continued practice (to borrow an expression of Longinus).96 The Platonic method is thus in perfect harmony and co-ordination with the Platonic result, as described and pursued.

Moreover, not merely method and result are in harmony, but also the topics discussed. These topics were ethical, social, and political: matters especially human97 (to use the phrase of Sokrates himself) familiar to every man, — handled, unphilosophically, by speakers in the assembly, pleaders in the dikastery, dramatists in the theatre. Now it is exactly upon such topics that debate can be made most interesting, varied, and abundant. The facts, multifarious in themselves, connected with man and society, depend upon a variety of causes, co-operating and conflicting. Account must be taken of many different points of view, each of which has a certain range of application, and each of which serves to limit or modify the others: the generalities, even when true, are true only on the balance, and under ordinary circumstances; they are liable to exception, if those circumstances undergo important change. There are always objections, real as well as apparent, which require to be rebutted or elucidated. To such changeful and complicated states of fact, the Platonic dialectic was adapted: furnishing abundant premisses and comparisons, bringing into notice many distinct points of view, each of which must be looked at and appreciated, before any tenable principle can be arrived at. Not only Platonic method and result, but also Platonic topics, are thus well suited to each other.